Queen and Archbishop (1506)

Abstract

Although Philip began to govern Castile as lone ruler, his policies alienated many and protests began to grow through the late summer and early autumn of 1506. On 25 September, after the monarchs had moved to Burgos, Philip fell ill and died and Archbishop Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros set up an interim government—illegal in that it lacked the queen’s approval. The cause of Philip’s sudden, unexpected death has never been satisfactorily explained, but historians have, almost universally, accepted that it tipped Juana into ‘madness,’ or irreversible mental decline. While examining Juana’s problems at the time of Philip’s death, I demonstrate that, on the contrary, the queen began to engage with political affairs. I draw attention to the significance of a ninety-day ban on any independent activities by the queen pending the convocation of a new Cortes and show Juana’s moves to build her own royal household during this time, pending further, significant moves on her part. In December, as the ninety-day ban drew to an end, Juana drew up two crucial laws revoking all Philip’s acts of government. The procurators who had been summoned to Burgos for the opening of the new Cortes proved reluctant to act without the queen’s support. This doomed it to failure. Nevertheless, the attempts of Cisneros and at least some royal councillors, to override the queen and convoke a Cortes without her approval, would not be forgotten and would set a precedent in the troubled years that led to the comunero uprising of 1520–1522.